


Stars Are Shining on Us Too

by unsubstitute



Category: Blake Shelton (Musician), The Voice (US) RPF
Genre: Christmas Fluff, Established Relationship, F/M, Fluff, Gen, Romance, i mean like...puppies on marshmallow clouds
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-26
Updated: 2017-12-26
Packaged: 2019-02-22 00:35:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,608
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13155408
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unsubstitute/pseuds/unsubstitute
Summary: Christmas Trees and Elves on Shelves...Blake and Gwen after the You Make It Feel Like Christmas Pizza Party. For S.





	Stars Are Shining on Us Too

**Author's Note:**

> I might have just missed posting this on actual Christmas, but it's _always_ GXmas so, there you go. Enjoy!

They collapse into bed, Blake first, Gwen falling on top of him. 

“This is literally the most tired I’ve ever been in my entire life,” she says, the words muffled by her mouth against his chest. 

Instinctively, he wraps an arm around her, rubbing long slow loops along the length of her back. 

“Do you hear that?” 

She shakes her head without looking up, her cheek sticking to the fabric of his t-shirt. 

“Me either. It’s quiet!” 

She shakes her head again, lifting her eyes to smile at him. He’s making a goofy surprised face, eyebrows raised, mouth in an O. She presses her body closer to him as she giggles. 

“Tonight was incredible,” he says. 

“I know! Are you excited about your team? You got two in the finale! Yay!”

“Oh yeah, that. If I’m honest I was rooting for Keisha but I’m happy for Red. So that’s real good. But no, tonight was incredible because of you! The show! I’m not even kidding, that was the best Christmas special I’ve ever seen.” 

“Awww, thanks babe, you’re crazy, but thank you! It looked really good on the TV, I have to say. I’m proud of it.”

“You better be,” he says. The seriousness of his voice, soft and low, sends a shiver through her body. He feels her reaction and holds her tighter. 

“So are you sick of Christmas yet?”

She pushes herself up with her arms so he can see her face clearly. “What? Never!” She swats at him. 

He laughs happily, “Just making sure!” 

“Oh, haha.” He catches her off-guard, grabbing her and rolling her over, hovering above her on the bed. 

She goes with it, wrapping her arms around his shoulders, and letting her fingers play with his hair. Their legs intertwine like clasped fingers, and as they kiss, she relishes the feeling of him relaxing into her, feeling strong when his weight rests on top of her. Their lips roll against each other like a tide, slow and playful. No matter how many times they makeout—and it must be thousands by now—it always surprises her. Their mouths work perfectly together. They anticipate each other, each knowing instinctively exactly what the other wants, but still it never feels like routine. There’s always something that feels new about it. Not just the rush in her stomach she still gets when he kisses her, like a crush is finally kissing her for the very first time. But the actual movements of their lips together. They could find a million ways to do this, she thinks. 

His lips are thick, and his tongue is somehow strong and delicate at the same time. While she’s lost in the feeling of his kissing, she’s only half aware that his hand is starting to wander. Just as it reaches her hip, he barks a laugh into her mouth. The rumble of it ripples against her, throwing her out of her trance. 

Forever in sync, she matches his laugh with her own, before she can realize she has no idea what’s funny. 

“What!” She asks, pushing on his shoulders for a better look at him. 

“You’re amazing. Like, how?” 

“How what?” 

His lips are already swollen, and he’s staring at her with eyes that look more black than blue, and she just wants to get back to making out. 

“I still don’t know how you do it,” there’s a dreamy kind of awe in his voice. “You’re wearing elf costume pajamas and you’re still the sexiest person on earth.”

“No, that’s you!” 

He rolls his eyes but plays along. “No, _I_ am the Sexiest Man Alive.” He puts his hand to his chest for emphasis, then gestures to her. “ _You_ are the sexiest person: woman, man, whatever.” He puts his hand down, and plays with the draw string of her hoodie. “Here you are in this ridiculous elf costume, not even like, a Santa Baby kinda elf thing,” He makes an appreciative little noise, “no, this is like a kid’s elf costume, but you’re still making me sooo—“ 

“It’s a Christmas tree.” 

“What?” 

She smiles, a giggle betraying her innocent tone, “it’s not an elf, it’s a Christmas tree! See the ornaments? She reaches under him to show him the mesh skirt attached to her waistband. It’s a tree skirt. Get it?”

“Okay...” He shakes his head with a chuckle, “well you’re a really pretty Christmas tree but your tree skirt is blocking my way into—“

“Christmas tree! Oh my God!” She pushes him over as she slips out from under him, bouncing on her feet as he stares, confused. “I forgot to show you! I finished our tree! Our real one!” 

“I know, I saw your Instagram.” 

“But I mean in person though!” 

“I saw it! It was right there in the kitchen when I got home.”

“Oh. But did you really, like, look at it?” 

She can tell from his face that he did not. “You have to come and see! I can’t believe we forgot. Tonight was too crazy! But I really wanna show you it. Please?” 

He closes his eyes and smiles. They both know he can’t resist her when she’s excited about something. “Ok,” he says, letting her pull him up and drag him toward the hallway. 

As they make their way to the kitchen, he pulls her back to him and wraps his arms around her waist. They walk like that, in tandem, as he nestles his face into the crook of her neck, leaving wet kisses there. It’s obvious he’s a lot more interested in getting back to bed than looking at her tree, but she refuses to be detoured. 

When they arrive, he nearly bowls them over, too busy nibbling at her jaw to notice she’s stopped walking. She gets his attention by turning her face and kissing him. After getting lost in him for a minute, she remembers her mission. His lips smack as she pulls away.

“Ok, wait right here,” she says. She hurries to the light switch and clicks it on. “Ta da!” She cheers. 

His face glows in the white lights of the tree. He looks up at it, and for a moment, next to the evergreen towering over him, he looks like a little boy. With the rest of the room still dark, there’s something ethereal about the tree and him, something angelic. She clicks on a couple more lights so he’ll be able to see the ornaments, then skips back to him, wrapping her arms around his middle while he hugs her close. 

“What do you think?” She asks. 

“It’s stunning. It looks like you pulled it out of a window display.” 

Gwen laughs at that, hugging him tighter. She lets him study it more, waiting for him to notice her surprise. As they stand there quietly, she hears a familiar clicking sound against the floor. 

“Betty! Where’d you come from?” 

Blake’s hold on Gwen loosens as he turns to Betty. “Hey there, Betty Girl. C’mere. What do you got there?” 

Gwen squints to get a better look. It’s some kind of pointy red stick. 

Blake snaps twice and commands her again to come. Betty looks reluctant but inches closer to them, and as she does Gwen gasps. 

“Betty!” She scolds, trying to keep her voice down. 

“What the hell is that?” Blake asks. “Oh shit, is that a—“

“Yep,” Gwen replies. “It’s an elf.” 

Blake huffs an annoyed sigh and snaps his fingers at Betty again. “What do you think you’re doin, huh? Gimme that.” 

Betty recognizes Blake’s ‘bad dog’ tone and stops where she is. Blake and Gwen both scold and plead with her to let Santa’s helper go, but it’s no use. She backs up, the elf still secured in her teeth. Blake charges toward her but she scampers a few steps away, waiting for him to try again. 

“Betty,” Gwen says, trying to sound cheerful. “The Elf on the Shelf is not for you, it’s for the babies. Can you put it down, please?” 

Betty crouches lower, eyes looking wild, ready to play. Blake snaps at her again. “Hey c’mon. Give it here.” He reaches for it and Betty shakes her head out of the way. “I’m not playing now,” Blake says, his voice almost a growl. “Drop it.” 

Betty stays where she is, still looking like she’s daring Blake to make another move. He takes the bait, grabbing for the elf’s legs hanging out of the dog’s mouth. He starts to get his fingers on it, but Betty yanks her head away. He’s gotten closer to her now, so he reaches out again immediately, trying to surprise her, commanding her again to drop, and this time he grabs it. But Betty, not ready for the game to end, wrenches her entire body away. 

The next five seconds seem to last ten times that long, as they watch the dog slam into the display stand beside her, creating a domino effect. Gwen stared, frozen, as her favorite Kelly Wearstler vase, a gift from the designer herself, topples onto the floor, while at the same time the stand holding it crashes against the wall, unseating the brand new neon sign Gwen just put up over the weekend, and sending that crashing to the floor as well, bumping into an end table holding all the family’s devices on its way. She watches then as a Santa Claus doll on the small device table wobbles and tumbles to the ground. 

She vaguely hears herself cry out, “Betty!” but it’s the huge crash of the vase and the sign that brings her back to reality. “My vase!” 

“Fuck,” Blake grumbles. “Bad dog!” he points at Betty, who is cowering in the back of the room, out of harm’s way. “Bad, bad dog,” he says again. “Honey, I’m so, so sorry. Let me go get a trash bag.” 

Gwen stares at the mess: Her shattered vase, the busted sign, the murdered Santa, with the Elf on the Shelf, abandoned and covered in slobber, laying in the middle of the disaster. Blake and his dog are looking at her from opposite ends of the living room, with identical expressions of remorse on their faces. And then there’s the giant Christmas tree behind them, sparkling away like nothing happened. Before she knows it, she’s howling in a fit of laughter. Blake stares at her like she’s lost her mind, running a hand through his hair as he starts to relax. Betty must sense the threat of punishment is over, because she comes trotting up to Gwen, happily circling her legs. Gwen doubles over, the harder she tries to calm down, the harder the giggling takes over, until finally Blake is grinning at her. Teary eyed and barely breathing between fits, she goes to Blake and puts her hands on her face. “Why is our life like a movie?” she breathes out before losing it again. 

“I don’t know,” he says, chuckling. 

She hugs him quickly and then centers herself. “Woooh, okay.” A deep breath. “Okay, so. You know what? This is fine. Tonight was a huge night for the humans, it’ll just be a huge night for the elves too. Huger than it already was. Their party got super rowdy, you know what I’m saying?” 

“Ohhh, did it now?” his eyes sparkle as he sees where her brain is headed. 

“Yep. I can’t believe they broke my vase. I’m gonna email Santa about this one for sure.”

“Of course we would get the naughtiest elves in the workshop,” Blake says. “Chelsea must’ve trained them.” 

“They went too far this time,” Gwen agrees. 

Blake’s straight face cracks and he hugs her again as he giggles. “Okay, so what do you need me to do?” 

“Can you go get me a marker and a napkin from the kitchen?” 

While he’s gone, Gwen inspects the damage. The vase did a perfect nose dive and is pretty much all in a neat little pile of black and white ceramic. She picks up Betty’s elf, avoiding the slimy middle, and slips him under a big piece. The neon sign dangles haphazardly behind the family’s devices’ charging station, one of the bulbs split in two. At least the kids’ phones are in tact, she thinks. Blake comes back with a marker, napkin, and a case of bottled water.

“I thought I’d kinda partition this area off so the kids don’t run up to the mess and cut themselves,” he says. 

She smiles at him. He takes his whole protective family man thing so seriously that sometimes she forgets he hasn’t been with them forever. She glances at their tree for a moment before focusing back on the task at hand. “Good idea. Amazing,” she says. 

She draws an “Oops” face on the napkin and throws it on top of the upside down vase base, while Blake makes his safety barrier. The water bottles lined up on the floor give her another idea, but Blake cuts her off. “Should we go make the pizza party look a little wilder?” he says. 

“I was just gonna say that!” 

“Good let’s go!” He grabs her hand and leads her down the hall to the office where the pizza boxes and 2 other elves are spending the night. One box has an elf hanging out of it, while another is open with an elf sitting up in the middle. She rolls her eyes at the box on the floor, knowing Betty knocked it off the table when she stole the elf that had been laying in it. There’s a few empty cans on the table but it’s not enough. Blake goes to get more cans out of the recycling while Gwen pulls magazines and paper off a desk and scatters them on the table and floor. She takes three sheets of paper and writes “What” “A” “Party,” one word on each, and places them at the room’s entryway. When Blake returns, he spreads the cans around and takes it a step further, knocking all the chairs over. Gwen picks up the elf from the open box to take with her. 

When they’re finished, she surveys the room. It is a total disaster. It looks like the elves invited all the elves in LA to this party. She makes a mental note to have her phone ready in the morning, because the kids are gonna lose their minds when they see everything. Blake puts an arm around her shoulders, and they start to walk out. She turns back to the scene and scolds the dolls, “you guys messed up!” 

“Y’all better have something real sweet in store for tomorrow night, I’ll tell you that much,” Blake says to the elf in Gwen’s hand.

As they leave the room Gwen is greeted again with the glow of the Christmas tree a few yards away. 

“It’s a beautiful tree,” he says softly. 

She looks up at him and then takes his hand. “Come on, I wanna show you it.” 

Blake has caught on that there is something specific she wants him to find, so he steps up as close to the tree as he can get. She takes a moment to tuck the elf she’s holding into the neon sign, and when she turns around he’s gazing between her and an ornament in his hand. It might only be from the dim twinkling lights, but his eyes look like they’re glistening. 

“This is so sweet,” he tells her. 

“There’s more. Keep looking.” 

She stands close to him, leaning into his side and rubbing her hand low on his back as he inspects the tree. Each special ornament he finds, he inspects like a diamond, clearing his throat a few times and sniffling once or twice. 

He picks out one from the middle of the tree, and handles it preciously, bringing it close to his face to look at it. “This one is my favorite,” he says, holding it for her to see. 

She takes his hand and moves it closer to her eyes for a better view. Like the rest of them, two dozen in all, it’s a red glass heart with the words “I Love My Family” etched into it in a pretty script. In the middle is a black and white photo of Blake on the couch, the one just behind where they’re standing now, with Apollo laying on his chest and each of the older two resting against either side of him, using his shoulders as pillows. All four of them are asleep, cushioned against each other. Blake’s cheek rests gently on top of Apollo’s nest of hair. Zuma is wrapped around Blake’s arm and Kingston has his arm flung across Apollo. They’d fallen asleep like that watching sports one Sunday, and stayed that way all afternoon. Each ornament has a different photo, candids like that one, snapped while no one was looking. Some with just Blake and one or two of the boys, some with all three, some with Gwen and some without. Some at the house, some at the ranch or the lake. Always with Blake and always showing obvious love. 

“We have all these ornaments that the kids made over the years, all these family memories of their whole lives get represented on Christmas in one way or another. From before we found you. But just because you haven’t been with us all along doesn’t mean you aren’t just as important to us. So we decided we needed to have your memories on our tree this year. Well, every year! But starting this year. Because we want you to always remember that this family wouldn’t be the same without you. So, yeah! The kids helped me pick out the pictures. I've been trying to take really cute ones without you knowing, and Todd and King have been helping too, and Dad. I’m sure the boys are gonna want to show you again in the morning. It’s just, you know, today was like, such an important day to me, so I just really wanted to do this tonight, while it’s still today. What do you think?”

“I think, it should be impossible for me to love you more than I did 10 minutes ago. But I’m pretty sure I love you more than it’s even possible to love a person. I don’t need photos or presents to feel like a part of the family, I remember constantly just from the way I feel when I’m with you. But I’m happy to have the ornaments anyway. They're so sweet, these pictures you got here...I’m…” he chokes a little, and shakes his head. Instead of finishing his thought, he envelops her, squeezing his arms tight around her as he buries his face in her hair. She clutches him as he holds her, silent and still in the light of the Christmas tree. 

Eventually, he stands upright and loosens his hold. She wraps her arms around his neck as she looks up at him. “I was just thinking about this a few minutes ago. Sometimes I actually forget that you haven’t been with me—us—forever. Like sometimes I can’t believe I haven’t known you my whole life. Not that I don’t remember when King and Zumie were little, but, wow we just got so lucky. You’re literally perfect for me. And for them.” 

He huffs out a chuckle, shaking his head. “No, you got it backwards. I’m the lucky one here. I mean, every single day is just, like, magic for me. The kids, our life. Like…look at this. Look at you!” He moves half a step back and gestures at her, then at the tree towering over them. “Right here, right in our house, are the two most absolutely stunning Christmas trees I’ve ever seen in my entire life.” 

She follows his gaze downward, and sees the kelly green polyester and the gold and red poof balls. She had totally forgotten she was still in her costume. She laughs as she hugs him. “You’re so dumb,” she says as she kisses him. 

He places the ornament he’s holding back on the tree, and kisses her again. “Thank you for this. I love them, and I’m gonna look at every single one of them again from now til we have to take it down. But for now, please, can we finally go to bed?” 

As if she needed convincing, he kisses her once more. “Okay, you win. Let’s go to bed.” 

He wraps an arm around her shoulders, holding her against him as they go. They stop at the edge of the room, clicking off the lights until only the light from the tree remains. They stand in the doorway to the kitchen, holding each other as they take the day’s last look at the Christmas glow. “It kind of feels like it’s really Christmas Eve right now,” she says. 

“Huh, yeah it’s kinda like, just being here with you makes it feel like Christmas. Wow. Someone should right a song about that.” He smirks at her, waiting for the reaction he knows he’ll get. 

“Oh my God!” she says, clicking off the lights of the tree and pushing him down the hallway, “you are really lucky you’re such a babe.” 

“I’m telling you I think somebody could have hit that. It could go like, 'I wanna thank ya baby',” he sings, turning back towards her. “'You make it feel like—'"

She interrupts him with a kiss. "I think we've finally enough for Christmas for the day," she whispers, and she leads him back to bed.


End file.
